• Audiometry is the measurement of the range and sensitivity of a person's sense of hearing.

• Pure-tone audiometry utilizes a series of pure tones presented at selected frequencies within the range of hearing essential for understanding speech in order to develop a profile of auditory acuity.

• An audiogram provides a graphical summary or profile of auditory acuity as a function of sound frequency, which can be used to characterize the degree, type, and configuration of a hearing loss.

• With conductive hearing loss, hearing is impaired for air-conducted sounds but not for bone-conducted sounds, producing an air-bone gap on the audiogram, whereas with sensorineural hearing loss, hearing is impaired for both air- and bone-conducted sounds.

• There are different audiogram patterns for different causes of sensorineural hearing loss: presbycusis is typically associated with a downward-sloping high-frequency loss pattern; noise-induced hearing loss is typically associated with a notched pattern (generally at 4 kHz); and Meniere disease is associated with a low-frequency trough pattern.

Historical note and terminology

Audiometry is the measurement of the range and sensitivity of a person's sense of hearing. In general clinical use, this typically incorporates a battery of tests of a person s hearing ability and related assessments of the function and integrity of the ear and its neural projections. Subjective audiometry includes pure-tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and Bekesy audiometry, whereas objective audiometry includes acoustic impedance audiometry/tympanometry and evoked response audiometry.

This article addresses the basic interpretation of pure-tone audiometry as measured using a pure-tone audiometer and as summarized in a standard graphical format called an audiogram. An audiogram is a convenient tool that characterizes the degree, type, and configuration of a hearing loss.

As early as 1885, Arthur Hartmann designed an “auditory chart” that graphically presented acuity to standard tuning forks as a function of frequency (Vogel et al 2007). Later means of graphically presenting auditory acuity as a function of frequency were developed in the early 20th century (Vogel et al 2007).

In the 1920s, Western Electric developed a commercially successful electronic audiometer (Vogel et al 2007). It went through a series of technological improvements, including the incorporation of bone-conduction testing capability by 1928. An early type of automated audiometer was invented by Hungarian-American biophysicist and Nobel laureate Georg von Békésy (1899–1972) and released in 1946.

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